Sheriff's 5-year budget plan includes more deputies, cars

Wednesday

May 7, 2014 at 5:43 PM

Sheriff Chris Blair and his top brass delivered a much-awaited five-year budget plan to the County Commission on Wednesday.

By Bill ThompsonStaff writer

Sheriff Chris Blair and his top brass delivered a much-awaited five-year budget plan to the County Commission on Wednesday. It included a funding strategy designed to return the agency to where it was in pre-recession years or, if possible, to align Blair with sheriffs in neighboring counties with more money and more resources.Blair and his senior staff underscored his argument that the Sheriff's Office is understaffed and ill-equipped, providing an 86-page report that featured thoroughly crunched data. They also played an audio recording of a dramatic 911 call, during which a woman, cowering in her northeast Marion home because a gun-wielding drunk in her neighborhood was firing potshots, pleaded for help that took 37 minutes to arrive.While commissioners were the main audience during Wednesday's 90-minute session, the sheriff, who as a candidate in 2012 said he could adequately protect the public without tax increases, conveyed a blunt message to taxpayers: Without higher taxes, at least in the near term, expect your safety, and that of county deputies, to be increasingly at risk.Blair and his staff suggested that some combination of a new sales tax and a slightly higher property tax in the special district that funds the Sheriff's Office would bring on board enough new deputies to relieve the stress of answering a much greater volume of calls from a bigger population seeking help.Maj. Gregg Jerald, the agency's general counsel, led the presentation. Going page by page in the report, he said he was offering a global perspective on the work of the Sheriff's Office.The view largely reiterated Blair's arguments about inadequate funding and manpower made during budget meetings with the commission a year ago.But unlike the 2013 talks — when in his first budget go-round Blair more or less cast his proposed spending plan on the table and left it to the commission to fund it or cut it — the sheriff came armed with finely honed statistics and nine funding options for the board to consider.Commissioners were openly appreciative of the work, which was assisted by county Budget Director Michael Tomich."I commend you guys for doing this," said Commissioner Stan McClain. "This is where we've been needing to get to for a while."Despite that, the presentation was made not long after commission Chairman Carl Zalak had asked county-level elected officials, including the sheriff, to submit 2015 budgets that hold the line on spending. Those budget plans are due by June 1.In terms of raising taxes, Blair's proposal for the next five years ranged between doing nothing and boosting spending high enough through new levies to hire 100 new patrol deputies, outfit them with new patrol cars, and add 79 new corrections officers at the county jail.Jerald noted that the Sheriff's Office today has roughly 190 deputies at the rank of sergeant and below working on patrol, as detectives, and in specialized units like K-9 or aviation.That's 32 fewer deputies than in 2008, when the Great Recession's tightening grip prompted budget cuts, and about the same number the Sheriff's Office had a decade ago.If no deputies are hired in the coming fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, the Sheriff's Office will have 13 fewer deputies than in fiscal year 2005, Jerald added.Had the Sheriff's Office just kept pace with growth in population and inflation, the agency would have 265 deputies, the report said.The agency's workload has skyrocketed over the past decade. According to Jerald's report, service calls to the Sheriff's Office jumped from 173,225 in 2003 to 309,027 last year, a spike of 78 percent.The Sheriff's Office fields 0.94 deputies for each 1,000 county residents. That, Jerald said, is far below the average ratio statewide of 1.6 deputies, and the 1.44 per 1,000 people that the Sheriff's Office found when examining the staffs of its counterparts in counties with populations between 200,000 and 400,000.That personnel shortage has led to increased response times, Jerald pointed out, which was identified as the top concern of a citizens' focus group assembled by Blair.Last year, on average, it took a Marion County deputy about 15 minutes and 37 seconds to answer a call — 35 percent higher than state and national averages and four minutes more than the agency's own goal for all calls.On the most urgent calls, deputies took about 11 minutes to arrive, or nearly double the 6-minute response time standard accepted by law enforcement agencies.The lag time created by the static staffing "increases danger to the public," Jerald told the commission. "While a crime's being committed they're in danger because they don't have a deputy sheriff to arrive at their property to assist them."And he provided numbers to illustrate that risk. According to Jerald, the Sheriff's Office in 2013 posted record numbers of cases for major crimes and sex offenses, while the anti-drug unit's workload roughly tripled what it was for 2011 and 2012.He added that the manpower shortage affects deputies, as well."It also causes a risk to the deputies who are out there. A lot of times, every day, they're out there, and they don't have any backup to assist them," Jerald said.Jailers face similar circumstances, Jerald explained. The county jail is 60 officers below accepted levels, and two pods remain closed because the agency lacks deputies to open them.Housing those inmates in other pods has led to overcrowding in those areas, as those wings have 362 more inmates than are allotted.Blair proposed nine separate options, looking out over the next five years, to combat the funding woes.On one end was maintaining the status quo on taxes, meaning keeping the property tax for the special tax district flat and living without a new local sales tax, which the County Commission is discussing as a potential ballot referendum later this year.In the current budget, property owners within the special tax district, which includes all parcels outside the five cites in the county, pay $3.21 per $1,000 of taxable value.Holding that rate steady without a sales tax, Jerald cautioned, would drop Marion to the third worst deputy-to-population ratio in the state and only exacerbate existing problems.In that case, the county would add only four new corrections officers for the jail, and not purchase any new patrol cars.On the other end of the spectrum, the Sheriff's Office could hire 100 new patrol deputies and 79 new corrections officers and buy 100 new patrol cars.That would require increasing the special district property tax to $3.70 per $1,000, tacking an extra dime onto the property levy paid by all county property owners (whose taxes fund the jail) and enacting a local sales tax.Blair told the Star-Banner that his optimal plan resides in the middle.He desires a half-cent sales tax for capital needs and a boost in the special district tax rate by 6 percent over five years. That increase would come all at once in the 2014-15 budget.With that, Blair could bring aboard 64 additional patrol deputies and buy the same number of patrol cars.Blair's budget proposal did not include an extra $1.2 million for 3 percent raises for his whole staff, his senior staff told the commission.The sheriff told commissioners that addressing the manpower shortage was his most pressing concern — to protect the public and his deputies, who sustained more than 80 physical assaults in 2013."We have to start somewhere trying to increase deputy strength, because of the calls for service and because it's driving response times up," Blair said."The facts are well documented," he added. "We have to begin moving this county in the right direction."Response times are extremely high and we need to reduce them, and the only way we can do that, because of the size of the county, is to add manpower."The board did not take action on the plan, but agreed to study it for future consideration.The outcome will be known in the weeks ahead, and hinges on one question posed toward the end of the meeting by Commissioner Kathy Bryant: "What it's going to boil down to is ... what level of service do we want?"Staff writer Joe Callahan contributed to this report. Contact Bill Thompson at 867-4117 or bill.thompson@ocala.com.

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